Looking for advice for file server

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zogthegreat

Member
Jan 20, 2019
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So I just purchased an Intel DC S3700 400GB on eBay for my SLOG drive. It's probably an overkill, but better to over engineer than under when it comes to a good data backup. I will play with a L2ARC drive later, when everything is running smoothly.

This is my current setup:

Asus Z9PR-D12 Socket 2011 w/ 2 x Xeon E5-2620
Asus PIKE 2008 RAID controller flashed to IT/pass through mode
72gb DDR3 ECC 1333
2 x's 60gb SSD / Hard RAID 1 for OS
1 Intel DC S3700 400GB for SLOG drive
6 x's 2 TB Seagate consumer grade SATA drives
2 x's 2 TB Seagate consumer grade SATA drives - cold swap drives

I'm trying to save up for some enterprise level drives, but I have to make do with what I have right now.

I'm also wondering if I should swap out the PIKE 2008 for a card that has a battery backup. I have 13 LiFePO4 battery packs @ 3.3v each. I'm planning to find a used battery backup for cheap and install the LiFePO4's inside. That should cover me encase the power goes out, but I'm not sure. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Side note, I do have experience with LiFePO4 batteries, I've been using them on modified electric scooters, go-carts and other insane projects that have freaked out my children's mother on many occasion, (they always came home mostly in one piece and I've never had an "accidental" battery mishap).

Right now I've been practicing installing Proxmox and creating and deleting zfs pools. I've also been practicing coping data to the server then pulling a drive and rebuilding the pool.

Is it OK to setup disk scrubbing as a cron job? Also, I've seen some posts that say you should "under provision" your drives, i.e. if you have a 250gb SSD, partition it as a 200gb. How much should I under provision a 2TB drive?
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Write cache isn't used in IT mode, so getting a raid controller with batteries then flashing it to IT mode would be pointless. Then you added SSD for ZIL, all the writes go to it first, making it "sort of" a write cache.
 
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zogthegreat

Member
Jan 20, 2019
40
9
8
Thanks @BoredSysadmin . I haven't really been playing with server equipment for about 10 - 12 years, so I figure that it's better to ask first instead of making some stupid, (and costly), mistakes.